The present invention relates to an adapter for converting a knife, which has a blade with a tip, into a skinning tool.
An adapter to convert a knife into a skinning tool facilitates the skinning and evisceration of animals. During a skinning operation, such an adapter lifts a skin of the animal from the muscle tissue, thus allowing the knife to slide up under the skin without slicing the skin or cutting up the meat. During evisceration, an adapter prevents the knife point from puncturing the entrails.
Several different types of adapters are already known. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,416, W. Duane Copeland, issued Aug. 16, 1988, there is provided a guard member that fits over the tip of a knife blade, with this guard member then being manually retained on the knife via a strand, which could also be secured to a hand guard of the knife. On the one hand, manually retaining the guard member is very impractical; on the other hand, very few knives have a hand guard.
In the device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,201, Joseph Goodwin, issued Sep. 22, 1981, a string is attached to the device and is then wrapped around the handle of the knife. This has not proven to be a very satisfactory solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,707,920, Calvin W. Montgomery, issued Nov. 24, 1987, provides a retractable, pivotably mounted point protector, with a cord being used to secure the point protector in place on the blade. Not only is this approach more expensive, too much of the knife blade is covered by the device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,432, Calvin W. Montgomery, issued Aug. 26, 1986, merely discloses a pivotably mounted gut hook.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,601,102, Robert W. Phillips, issued July 22, 1986, discloses a knife guard that has a thumb rest to allow the guard to be held on a knife.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an adapter, to convert a knife into a skinning tool, that is practical to retain on a knife, is efficient to use, and is economical to produce.